


Scheinheilig

by goldtracing



Series: the arcane under the obvious [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Historical Hetalia, Introspection, Power Dynamics, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26490319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtracing/pseuds/goldtracing
Summary: China was never tame. Others would be foolish to ever assume otherwise.
Relationships: China & England (Hetalia), China & Japan (Hetalia), China & Mongolia (Hetalia)
Series: the arcane under the obvious [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061180
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Scheinheilig

> _“And we‘re not talking about a wolf, are we? We’re talking about a Great Red Dragon…” – Astaroth, The Maelstrom: Book Four of the Tapestry Series_

China was never tame.

Thinking back to his own beginnings, Yao is often left with a concoction of curiosity and existential dread. First there was nothing and then there something – it was the world and it was harsh.

He never had a real childhood, even less than most of his kind. The scraps that he had, had been nasty, short and brutish. Despite what everybody said, life isn’t fair, and he had learned that fast. With nobody to care for him from his initial birth, instead, he had taught himself to forge for food and search for water on his own.

As a personification, he actually didn’t need nourishment but that had never prevented an empty stomach from causing him immense discomfort. The lifestyle he had persuaded in those wretched days had been anything but civilized.

That was also how the humans had found him, a wild little thing with a vicious temper. That was something that had persisted throughout the centuries, a red thread that followed the twists and turns and reinventions of his personality throughout the millennia. The only thing that had changed about it was that it became more refined as time passed by.

_A poisoned dagger on a moonless night._

And more controlled, with rage being the fuel that propelled him towards the goals.

_Fire-ice, volatile and sudden and also as lethal. He was the centre of the world, the middle kingdom, the divine son of the heavens that was blessed by the spirits. The one to bring utter defeat crashing down on those that dared defy him. Blood spilled like water on fields and city streets. Other personifications paying tribute and earning his protection if they behaved. Rebellion snuffed out by flame and sword._

He really was a Great Red Dragon with his temper and greed and cunning. Silk robes and courtly manner could only do so much to disguise the fact that he wasn’t human and would never be. With his amber eyes and warm smile, he appeared tame, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Once their backs were turned the gentle way he held himself would become firm and his smile as sharp as a diamond-cutters blade. Yao had never claimed to be nice, had never claimed to be altruistic, and he was seldom truthfully either of those. He had always loved the harsh snap of his flag on newly conquered territory more than the lavish celebrations of the palace. The brittle of excitement that power plays brought, be it through intrigue or warfare, had always been more addictive that the monotone life of a simple farmer.

So, it was so pathetic that people believed him to be of no threat. Still he prostrated himself in front of those that believed they were older than him. He continually humoured generals and politicians that were deluded enough to believe themselves wiser and shrewder than him. Because in the end, it didn’t matter how much he bowed or smiled until his head spun from the pure idiocy that some of his very own people could display – he was still the apex predator and far above their stations.

China was never tame.

And yet there were those that almost had permanently reduced him to such.

Mongolia had been a thorn in his side for a long time – the wound becoming infected and painful, going from a small prick to a long gash. If there was ever one nation he truly had feared, it was his northern neighbour.

During those years of occupation, he had seethed, both with rage and fear.

Yet he had endured, he had been patient, because at that point he had learned that it was smartest to play the long game. To simply wait and observe and then strike.

It was a few tedious centuries until the once grand empire had been severely cut down in seize and had all of his teeth pulled.

Then there was England.

Somewhere between the long centuries, between the dynasties, he had gradually grown decadent. So infatuated with his position of the middle kingdom and so assured that he could never be usurped, he had allowed himself to stagnate. Over time, his relatively inactive mind had been sapped of its vigour.

All those letters that India had sent him, warning him that the Westerner was very much a weasel, had all been crudely laughed off. How could such a filthy creature best him?

The price he had payed for his wrong assumptions had been high. Soon, he had found himself chocking on his own hubris and then swimming through hazy, opium dreams. England had laughed when he had seen all that imperial prestige crumble to ash as China had further inhibited himself. Being in that foreign empire’s yoke had really been such a great humiliation, as well as being outwitted and outgunned by somebody that had only started to develop a real appetite for power.

When the time had come, Japan had been all to keen to impress that supposed inferiority even further. ‘Till this day, Yao could only despise Kiku for all the atrocities the latter had committed. It was the pain of being played around with, used like some ragdoll just to be tossed in the corner when the invader had better things to do.

Deep down, China sometimes had wondered if it had been Japan’s twisted form of revenge for having been in his iron grasp for centuries. Or it was just that the islander came after him too much, had craved dominance and glory just like he had? Or it had been both. Yao had forged his own demise when he had taught his protégé.

All that didn’t stop him from deriving pleasure from the sight of Japan’s battered and war-torn body after the war, even though he had known that such sadistic joy was wrong. A thousand suns simultaneously bursting into being indeed.

China was never tame.

The present hadn’t changed that, it had just made him even more skilled at hiding just how dangerous he was. To him, it was like playing a game of Weiqi – it was just a question of what pieces to move when.

How could he simply settle with a post-imperial after-life if he could one day hold the whole world in the palm of his hand?

Maybe he would even manage to take over the whole world without firing a single shot, as he had once boasted. Such tactics certainly wouldn’t be accounted for by the others, who were used to grotesque displays of violence and bragging about might.

In the end, they would have nobody but themselves to blame for considering him tame.


End file.
